My Esperance Escapade

An Unexpected Series of Events

I was in Esperance 700kn from Perth in country Western Australia doing a clinical attachment.

Visited some farmers which I did a farm attachment with a year ago one night 20km from Esperance.

10pm on the way back car started to make strange noises above 100kph.

Car started STEAMING.

I realised temperature guage was more than hot.

Stopped the car on the roadside.

Realised my handphone was down to 1 bar of battery and beeping for more electrical juice.

Called the farmers I just visited. Got their answering machine.

Called dad in Singapore. Told me to put water in the radiator. I couldn't open the hood, it got slightly jammed. It was pitch black, I didn't have a torch and the wind was almost gale force and COLD. Gave up trying to open the hood.

I tried to start the engine to no avail.

Called the local automobile association. They took an hour to get to me.

Meanwhile a couple of kind souls passing by the road checked to see if I was alright. Bless their souls.

11pm the mechanic truck came. HOORAY!

Followed closely by the local police who said they had a report about some strange goings on on the road. o_0 They stayed and helped with their floodlight-like torches. Mechanic guy couldn't fix my car.

Car was left on the roadside till morning when it got towed to town.

Turned out it would cost me the SAME amount I paid for the car to fix it, and even if I did fix it, it would take a few days to do.

With the probability of more than just the engine being damaged and my parents coming to Perth in 3 days I made the sad decision to get rid of my car. Selling it for a token price to the garage owner for his apprentices to take apart and put together.

It was a sad and sudden decision indeed. My car had served me well as long as I had had it. I tried to take care of it as best as I could with regular servicings. Just a couple of months ago I even put in a new air conditioner and high beam.

That has all pretty much gone to naught. Now my ex-car is worth not much more than as scrap metal.

There was nothing I could have done to prevent what happened to my car.

The likely series of events was something went wrong in the engine, overheating everything, steaming off all the water in the radiator and bursting a hole in the process. The temperature guage misleadingly showed "normal" with no water in the radiator and only showed "high" when it was far too late to do anything about it.

Now I'm on the lookout for a second-hand car for driving to clinics and farms.

Do let me know if you are selling!

Thank God the car broke down 15km from a major town, not anywhere along the 700km between Esperance and Perth where the tiny towns that were few and far between were very unlikely to have a roadside assistance mechanic. I could have been stranded in the middle of nowhere for hours!